Yechon

I was born in Korea so part of the reason for moving from white Annandale to Koreatown Annandale was all the Korean businesses and restaurants. Yechon has made a name for itself by being one of the Korean restaurants that is open 24/​7, and it happens to be in walking distance for me too, which makes it convenient. The waitresses dress in traditional Korean garb even if they aren’t Korean themselves, to enhance the experience. The food is good quality. I should probably visit again soon.

My friends and I were craving Korean food so we stopped by Yechon on the way back home. It was a Sunday afternoon and the restaurant was completely packed! People were waiting to get seated as well. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long at all to get seated so we were pretty happy about that. They gave us the full regular menu as well as the lunch menu. Wow, there are SO many different options to choose from. Starting with sushi, stews and soups, noodles, bento boxes, etc. You name it, most likely they have it. Man, the lunch specials were such a great deal, $ 6.95 per entrée and they had a lot of the basic entrees on there (soondubu, sullung tang, kimchi jjigae, etc.). The four of us decided to order the lunch special soondubu (spicy soft tofu soup) to share, as well as galbi dolsot bibim bap, mool neng myun, and jun bok (abalone) porridge. WOW, everything was SO good. Like seriously… including the ban chans (side dishes). I knew immediately that since the ban chans were legit, the main entrees were going to be delicious as well.
The galbi (marinated beef) in the dolsot bibimbap was SO good. perfectly marinated and tender. They give you a good amount of meat and it comes with a miso soup on the side. The mool neng myun was amazing as well. The noodles were thin, soup was clean and refreshing, and the veggies that came along with it were all fresh. I can only imagine how delicious it will be during the summer days. The junbok jook was really good as well. When it comes out, it just looks like a huge bowl of plain porridge. BUT, it had the perfect level of flavor and warmth that can really comfort a stomach. Their portion size is huge!
Despite how busy it was, our food came out fairly quickly and they took care of us in terms of filling up our water cups, ban chan refills, bringing our bill out right away when we asked. Excellent and quick service! You also can’t beat the fact that it’s ²⁴⁄₇! I think they also extended their parking lot so there’s definitely more space which is definitely a plus!

You get yummy meal for your money! Most of the dishes I have had here are either excellent or very good (thus, the 4 stars). A go to place!

Open 24 hrs. is awesome! Never took advantage of that, but it’s always a good option for that late meal.
Very good variety of sides. I always enjoy the mashed potato side and they do have it. Kimchi, string beans, seaweed, fried tofu and more.
Had bibimbap with beef slices. $ 13… A bit more bean sprouts and not enough meat than I would prefer, but still tasty. Also had the korean pancake, which was VERY filling. very thick. I guess I would prefer more seafood and a bit less pancake, but still tasty. $ 16 – 17 for the pancake…
Every time I’ve been here, it’s been crowded. seems like the place to be. Service is good especially since they have the call button at each table. A good demonstration of Korean service and hospitality.
They also recently redid the parking lot, which is great. It’s more organized and more parking!

One of the few places around that’s open ²⁴⁄₇ so I really can’t complain. I would recommend venturing out from the korean bbq here and trying other dishes like the pancakes and soup/​stew dishes. I’ve had a mix of good and meh service each time I come here so I’d give it a pretty solid 3. Doesn’t hurt that it’s next to breeze café if you’re hankering for some sweets afterwards.

Heard raving reviews from a friend, so we came here at 10pm on a Thursday. The place was a third packed. We were seated right away. We ordered a seafood pancake with pork belly and beef brisket for bbq. I was extremely hangry but before I knew it, they brought out the side dishes, and they were all great! I am picky with Kimchi, but theirs was very decent. The only thing I didnt like among the side dishes was the white jello thingy with spicy sauce. Our pancake and bbq meat were brought out quickly as well, and a waitress (dressed in colorful hanbok) stood right next to us and cooked all the meat. The pancake was so big we couldn’t finish it (lunch for me today), and there was a good amount of meat, even for 2 hungry people. I came home didn’t smell like bbq, which is always a plus, and couldn’t fall asleep because I was too STUFFED! Great place! Can’t wait to come back (maybe tonight…)

Delicious 24hour korean restaurant in edge of Annandale. It’s a traditional korean restaurant that offers huge amounts of marinaded galbi, bulgogi, terriyaki, seafoods and soups. Took my cousins here who studied abroad in Korea and she was impressed with their flavors.
The servers all wear traditional korean gowns and give complimentary bonchon (this isn’t the fried chicken, it’s actually small side dishes). This place is clean, food is great and servers are very attentive. Overall, I would always recommend this joint in town!

I no longer live in Northern Virginia, but whenever I come back home, I must go to Yechon at least once!
They have variety of Asian foods, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, though I believe most people come for their amazing Korean BBQ.
Worth mentioning, this place is among the few places in NOVA where is open 24/​7, and they take a great care of their customers all day long.
Their BBQ comes with many sides, and sides are delicious and free refill.
Last time, I ordered Yukgaejang, which is a Korean soup with beef and vegetable, and a side of rice. You will need to add the rice to your soup and let it sit for a minute before you start eating. The soup is, in fact, very spicy, but if you like spicy it can simply become your favorite Korean soup.

I had Christmas dinner at Yechon this year. Yechon is a busy 24-​hour Korean restaurant in Annandale. Even on Christmas, there was a line out the door. People waited in the rain for their Korean fix! Good thing the line moves quickly.
Come to Yechon when…
— You are hungry at an odd hour. When all the other Korean restaurants are closed, Yechon is still open and lively.
— Your group wants to eat different things. Korean restaurants have specialties. One restaurant makes the best naengmyun, another restaurant serves up a mean jampong. Yechon has everything, so you’re sure to satisfy everyone in your group.
— Someone in your group has never tried Korean food. Yechon is a good first place for Korean food newbies, since the menu is so vast.
What I don’t like
— Yechon gets very busy. It’s extremely loud; the servers quickly clean up tables when diners leave and smash plates and cups in their hurry.
— Their food is pretty generic and standard. If you’ve had Korean food a couple times, I recommended branching out and upgrading to other restaurants to find the best Korean food Annandale has to offer.

I was amazed by how quickly the waitstaff move! We were in an out of there in 30 min.
The galbi tang and yookeh Jjang had the same broth. There was a lot of beef in both soups!

Everyone knows how critical I am of Korean joints around DMV. But at last! We have found the winner! And frankly, this is probably some of the best Korean restaurant food I’ve ever had stateside.
Prices were reasonable given that the portions were huge, and everything tasted fantastic. We tried a variety of things; pajeon, japchae, bulgogi, mandu, bibimbap, etc. And all of it was great. And the banchan was all really fresh and well-​made as well. I’m not really sure what else to say because you’re either familiar with Korean food or you’re not, but if you are, this place is the way to go.
I like that this place is 24 hours. Makes me feel just like being back in Seoul, pigging out on food in the middle of the night after a long night out. The only bummer is they don’t serve any Chilsung Cider.
The service was good too, and my waitress even gave me a free calendar for the holidays. I thought that was a nice gesture.
So overall, this is the place I would recommend without hesitation for getting great Korean food. Easily ⁵⁄₅!

Having moved from NY recently, we were looking for a Korean restaurant that didn’t specialize in anything, but offered a wide range of dishes. It can get pretty tricky with places specializing in bbq, gom tang, school food, etc. It is hard to find a restaurant that is ‘good’ (enough) across the board. We’ve done a take out from seoul garden so we decided to visit yechon.
Went on a saturday.
1. BUSYBUSYBUSY — not sure if they’re always busy. but they are a 24 hour establishment. The line was out the door. But we got a table pretty quickly.
2. Hanbok — everyone wears hanbok, well the servers. I thought it was nice to see pretty dresses as their uniform.
3. Food: we ordered hwe dup bap, sul lung tang, and ojinuh bokkum with mungbean pancakes as apps. they were all very good. The banchans were good, too. They offered a wide array of banchans. Hwe dup bap had a generous portion of fish.
4. service: again, they were busy — so we had to flag down our servers to get napkins, more banchan, our check, etc.
We’ll be back, most definitely. There’s a bakery right next to them, which makes it convenient to get dessert after.

We were in the mood for Korean, so we drove out to Annandale because Yechon has all the hype! Since my dinner guests and I have all lived in Korea, we have pretty high standards for Korean food and Yechon lived up to our expectations. Everything is very authentic from the restaurant being open 24/​7, to the service buttons on the table, and the dishes straight from Korea. Servers wore traditional hanbok, which was a nice touch. The menu has a ton of pages and options with English translations. Surprisingly, no pictures!
We ordered family style– soju and Cass, samgapsal, bulgogi, goju panjeon, and mandu. Only some of the meat could be grilled at the table, I’m guessing due to the size of the grill, but they brought the samgapsal out raw and some of he other meat was brought out cooked. The timing of the food was perfect and it was nice having a server helping us with the grill. Although we could have done it ourselves, we were all chowing down on the banchan options so it was nice to not have to monitor the meat.
The mandu was excellent and the goju panjeon was SPICY, beware! The server said one of the meat dishes would serve one person, but that was a bit of an exaggeration. We had 6 people and ordered 4 portions of meat along with the panjeon and mandu and were very satisfied. It was actually a bit too much food.
We leisurely ate and were not rushed out at the end of our meal. It’s a bit pricey as far as Asian food goes and downright expensive if comparing to cost in Korea (but that’s just silly). Overall good quality food, authentic atmosphere, and a nice night!

Umm is everyone else taking a special pill before eating here that makes the food taste magical? If so, can someone please pass some over to me? Because I thought the food here was average at best.
Went here with the family during the week, but pretty late at night. The place was pretty empty with only 2 – 3 other tables with guests. Service was non-​existent. What good is that call button on the table if you’re not going to actually come over when we utilize it? It took forever to take our order and even longer to receive the meats. It’s raw meat… how could it possible take long? Someone please explain. And then to get our check after the meal was done was nearly impossible. I had to literally get up and remind the waiter that we had requested for our check.
Besides the terrible service, the food was overpriced and bland. It’s also absurd that certain meats, such as my dearly beloved pork belly, could only be ordered in pairs. So if I wanted that meat, I had to order two plates of it when one plate already costs a ridiculous amount. Makes zero sense. The portion sizes were small and the flavor of meats were unimpressive.

What else can I give but a 5, for the gift of an escape (even if illusory) from the soulless, indistinguishable ‘burbs of greater Washington to a dark, wooden shop bustling with all the toil and relish of a Korean kitchen? This ethnic restaurant wraps its menu offerings in the full-​blown cultural experience of the cuisine. The majority of its patrons appear to be Korean families; they obviously feel well catered to here.
Walking in from the dedicated parking lot (which appears to be in expansion mode) you are greeted by a waitress in full Korean costume complete with delicate, embroidered blouse. She courteously and efficiently escorts you to an open table (no wait at a recent weekend lunch time) and hands you a massive menu. Lots of adequately-​described and well-​edited English translations of menu items are available (hallelujah!)
The restaurant has a full sushi bar and 2 pages worth of Japanese offerings, which we skipped because… Korean.
A quick scan of my trusty Unilocal app and quick conference with my mostly vegetarian dining companion, and we’ve settled on the scallion/​chilli pancake which I have been rather craving, as well as a spicy stew with rice. I am partial to food that resembles Indian plating, so the choices make me happy (translates as: I’m getting a Korean version of a stuffed paratha and rice with curry! Yay!)
The panchan arrives first followed by the food in short order. No noticeable wait. The waitress served the pancake by cutting it with scissors into triangle wedges, and patiently tolerated my anthropologist-​style questioning about the correct pronunciation of «pajeon». We start chomping on the hot and slightly greasy pancake combined with the various panchan. Wholly delicious, though I did desire an even more fermented, overpowering version of the kimchi than the one they served.
We dived into the vegetarian stew whose vegetables were basically zuchinni, soft tofu, and onion, but whose seriously-​spiced, seafood-​based broth offered lots of clams/​shrimps/​chunks of fish, with strong fishy, umami? flavor. Now I’m not one to shy from spice and strong flavor, but the thing was literally simmering at the table and I needed it to cool down. Korean spiciness is cooked into the broth, so it wasn’t like biting into a raw Thai or Mexican chilli bomb where your lips tend to go numb and you have to coat your tongue in dairy balm to be able to taste anything again. This heat just leaves you panting. Good panting though.
We were just stuffed, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves being surrounded by Koreans and their exquisitely presented foods.
Perhaps the only thing lost in translation here was a sign I saw in the bathroom stall, saying «No Dumping». They are missing some kind of object at the end of that imperative construction, perhaps «trash items». No matter.

After 900+ reviews for Yechon, I’ll sum it here: great food, spotty service, 24-​hours, and they don’t take reservations.
We recently celebrated a friend’s birthday, who was craving for Korean food (and not the buffet Iron Age or Honeypig style). There are limited «good» options in Maryland so we decided to venture out to Annandale, where there are plenty of options. Knowing Yechon’s reputation, we decided to come here for an early Sunday dinner and even then there was a wait.
The first thing you’ll notice is like most Korean restaurants, your clothes and ultimately sweat will smell like cooked meat. Even if you decide not to get Korean BBQ, you’ll definitely smell it from one of your neighbor’s tables. Good luck getting a menu during peak hours, so you’ll have to employ the ol’ traditional Asian tactic, which is flag down anyone and everyone that works there (busboy included).
Their portion sizes are fairly generous and any food that says «for two people,» it’s really for 3 – 4 people. So not knowing, we ordered an outrageous amount but still ended up finishing majority (what can I say, we loved the food). We ordered a seafood hot pot, bossam, seafood pancake and chicken fried rice — all were super good.
I subtracted one star because their service was spotty, where we often couldn’t flag anyone down or any requests take a good 10 minutes to get. They also didn’t have oysters, like at all. No oysters for the bossam (shouldn’t that be cheaper then?) or oyster pancake. That’s a pretty big deal.
Pro tip: Korean fried rice is unlike your Chinese and other style, it’s definitely tasty.
Pro tip II: there isn’t a designated waiter/​waitress, so embrace the Asian culture, take the initiative and flag down anyone who works there to place orders, extra napkins, extra bowls, ask questions, and get recommendation for dessert (Siroo is the place to go afterwards)

Where to begin??? This place is GREAT and what Korean BBQ should be! It is open 24 hours every day of the week and all holidays (dangerous knowledge).
They have a huge menu with many of the Korean BBQ staples. My friend and I got the Dwaeji bulgogi (spicy sliced pork) and Dak Gu (spicy marinated chicken) which were both cooked tableside. We also ordered the Gochu Pajeon (hot pepper and scallion pancake). All of this comes with multiple sides of kimchi, tofu, and steam rice. This was way more food than two people could eat but we welcomed all the left overs! If you can save room, there a great bakery next door selling adorable baked goods as well as tea sets, mugs, and other related items.
The restaurant is large and was packed when we went on a Wednesday night at 7:30 though we fortunately did not have to wait. The staff is very good and attentive with quick service. Considering how many people they have to serve, it is impressive.
I have found my new favorite Korean BBQ restaurant. This is definite repeat!

This is what a Korean BBQ should be. For an example of what it absolutely should not be, please reference my review for Honey Pig.
As far as Korean goes in the Baltimore, DC, Virginia area, this is the best place that I can find. It’s open 24 hours and the vibe that you’d expect from every good Korean place.
The Banchan is excellent and quickly refilled… you get a selection of at least 8 things and soup every time you go. The Kimchi is on point and the ojingeo bokkeum, aka spicy squid/​my favorite dish is spicy and excellent every time.
I also typically order a seafood or vegetable pancake, which here is the size of a large pizza. It’s humongous and always great to have as leftovers for later.
On the downside, the service is a bit hit or miss… I always feel like if I spoke fluent korean, I’d do better here, but I really can’t complain about it, because it really is THE BEST place to go to get Korean in this region.
There’s also a great Korean bakery/​coffee shop next door that is the perfect coupling with Yechon… you can go there to sit and think about how much food you just consumed over coffee and a variety of desserts.
If you want to try solid, authentic Korean, you should go here.

I have been here so many times and each time I can never get them past the three star point.
The pro! They are open ²⁴⁄₇. How perfect is that? You can eat here after playing in DC!
When I came here last night, after a long night of partying, the service was slow. I asked them for more ban chan and they took forever. I had to ask them three times to get more ban chan.
I would say their udon is a ²⁄₅. It is not that great. The shrimp tempura is the best part of the dish. The shrimp tempura is crispy and crunchy. The broth is muddy and not refreshing as you would find at other restaurants.
The soonduboo is a ⁴⁄₅. It’s not too spicy that’s why I loved it! The actually soft tofu in the soup makes the dish a 4! The soonduboo is soft and melts in your mouth. They give you big chucks of it which I love!
The bimbimbap is not the bolsook bimbimbap so it does not come in the traditional clay pots.

I have been going to Yechon for decades (yikes, I’m old) — it was always a favorite late night eats place after clubbing in DC with friends. Now that I’m much older, I appreciate this institution, which not only has stayed in business for so long in an area with lots of failed Korean restaurants, it is busier than ever! Whether I go in for their early breakfast special or during the mad busy lunch time, this place is so packed, it’s hard to find parking.
Their Korean food is solid — nothing extraordinary, but it is just honest-​to-​goodness homecooked Korean comfort food. My family likes that they have a sushi bar, because we all love their hwe dup bap, which is sashimi and fresh veggies served over rice with spicy red pepper paste. Last time my family dined here, we ordered a variety of foods to include hwe dup bap, udon with shrimp tempura, kalbi tang, soft tofu stew, mae woong tang (spicy cod fish stew) and hae jang gook (blood cube soup, aka «hangover soup»). Despite being super busy (I really think there were no empty tables), the wait staff was efficient and very friendly.
Sure, Yechon isn’t the most exciting place to go for Korean food, but when I want food like my Mom makes at home, this is where I would go.